Columbine

“Eric killed for two reasons: to demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it,” writes Cullen.

Klebold was another story. He was a quiet, lonely boy, according to Cullen. He had a history of depression and suicidal thoughts. He admired Harris and looked to him for direction and approval. Indications are that Klebold wavered until the last minute about whether to take part in the attack, but he apparently decided that if life was not worth living, he would take as many people with him as he could.

The two began their downward spiral by vandalizing property and progressed to petty theft. They boldly declared their plans to annihilate the human race in journals and other writings, but few people took them seriously. Harris began building pipe bombs and other devices, which he hid in his bedroom closet. He kept his parents at bay by admitting to tiny infractions but lying to cover his larger transgressions. He was good at telling adults what they wanted to hear and pulled down good grades.

More than a year before the killings, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a van. Harris was also known to police for threats posted on his website, but in the wake of the shootings, county officials, fearing blame, covered up that paper trail.

The boys’ parents, teachers, friends, along with school officials and the police, failed to put together information about their activities that might have raised red flags.

Cullen’s minute-by-minute account of the shootings is gripping, not to mention deeply disturbing. Student witnesses reported that Harris and Klebold’s demeanor was haughty, derisive, and their manner of killing arbitrary. The media, at pains to ascribe a motive, latched onto the notion of two outcasts taking their revenge, and filtered every piece of evidence through that lens, according to the author.

Cullen’s assessment is that, based on Harris’s profile as a psychopath, nothing short of incarceration would have stopped him from committing a horrendous act of violence. Klebold, conversely, would have been unlikely to kill anyone other than himself; he needed Harris’s influence to turn his anger outward.

Whatever ultimately motivated the teenagers, much has been learned in the aftermath of their deed. Columbine has served as a catalyst for school officials across the country to add security measures such as metal detectors, and the mistakes by law-enforcement personnel during the siege led to a rethinking of response tactics.

The state of Colorado passed legislation making it more difficult for juveniles to obtain guns, but stopped short of closing every loophole in the law governing gun-show sales. Schools are more alert to signs of psychological disturbance in their students. These policy changes have undoubtedly contributed to lives saved in subsequent actual or potential school attacks.

Columbine stands as a grievous event, one that defies efforts to understand or come to terms with what happened. But Cullen’s humane approach, and especially his side trips into the recovery efforts of survivors, offers welcome perspective on what can be learned from this bleak tale.

April Austin is a former Monitor education writer.

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